This kit was bought
as a spur of the moment purchase in my local hobby shop. I had wanted a
Hurricane, but they had sold out, and then I saw the Airfix box. I realised I
didn't have an early Mk Spitfire, and having always wanted to do a Battle of
Britain era one, reached for my wallet.

I decided that after
a 4 year break from model making, I would dive in at the deep end, and added
stretched sprue and some additional scratch built parts to the cockpit to 'busy
it up'. My trusty datafile was soon dog-eared and finger marked....

The only niggles I
found with an otherwise painfree build, were the lack of the fuel filler cap,
and a Malcolm hood canopy that a) wouldn't fit, and b) turned opaque after I
used Klear on it. All the other canopy parts were fine....guess the gremlins got
to that before I saw them. When I get the chance, I will replace it, so for now
it remains loose.

Click on
images below to see larger images

For painting and
weathering, I decided that I wanted a war weary kite, one that had seen a lot of
action. Instead of going for the option of using the Dark Earth and Dark Green
as advised by the instructions, I went for colours a couple of shades lighter,
as the fade of the paint was to be extensive. I used preshading for the first
time, with some mixed results. Will need to practice to make perfect I guess.
Paints used were a mix of Humbrol and Revell enamels

For
weathering, I used artists oils for the first time to simulate oil streaking.
The 'sludge-chalk' wash was used to pick out the panel lines, and crushed chalk
was used to create both cordite and exhaust streaking. I also used crushed chalk
to create the 'dark to light' patches that I had seen on a picture of a very
heavily weathered Spitfire courtesy of one of my fellow ARCers.

The kit decals were
used, and settled perfectly with applications of Klear. I used Humbrol
Matte to dull it all down.

In my mind, the
Spitfire has just returned from a hectic sortie over Kent. The lack of bullet
damage goes to show the combat savvy of the pilot. The evidence of the hard
combat is shown by the amount of cordite smoke that stains the wings. At some
point, the Merlin engine has popped an oil line, and has resulted in the pilot
needing to pancake quick at the first available airfield. As soon as the ground
crew effect repairs, re-arm and re-fuel, then she will be ready again to defend
the skies over the South coast.....